About - Gautam
Gautam Sachdeva is a spiritual guide and author, dedicated to helping seekers find peace and harmony in the everyday turbulence of modern life and relationships.
The ground is prepared
Born and brought up in Mumbai, Gautam was a serious, introverted and, by his own description, timid child. The pivotal event that changed his life came at the age of fourteen when his father Ajeet Sachdeva, the founder of an advertising agency called Impressions, passed away. Gautam grappled with many questions about death with its attendant fears and insecurities at this time.
In his late teens, he began working alongside his mother to manage the agency and help his family. Eventually, it became imperative for him to take over as the head of Impressions. At this point he found himself, at twenty-four, leading a staff of thirty professionals, all much older and more experienced than he was.
This was again a transformative phase for Gautam. He had to forge and sustain harmonious relationships with people from diverse backgrounds, be they CEOs of multinational corporations, suppliers, industry peers or colleagues.
Seeds are sown
Gautam’s spiritual life had been fairly ordinary; it had consisted of a few weekend trips with his family to the shrine of Sai Baba at Shirdi (when his father was alive) and reciting the Gayatri Mantra.
Between 1996-99, his mother Santosh Sachdeva, experienced a Kundalini awakening in a series of intense, otherworldly experiences. She had then been studying a course called Brahma Vidya (Knowledge of Brahman) which was based on an ancient system of Tibetan breathing exercises.
Santosh had been a home-maker who, until then, had diligently fulfilled the dual roles of mother and father for her children after her husband’s passing. But consequent to her awakening she became a spiritual guide and Guru to seekers from all over the world, many of whom came to her doorstep in search of guidance.
Gautam was profoundly impacted by being in his mother’s ‘oceanic presence of calm and equanimity’ as her son while simultaneously witnessing her work as a spiritual teacher, mentoring aspirants on the subjects of Kundalini and meditation. He followed her example and began studying Brahma Vidya.
It was this course, he recognises now, that prepared him for the events to come which propelled him into, what he calls, the ‘presence of Presence’. It brought his latent spiritual inclination to the fore.
In 1999, Santosh Ma, as she came to be known, decided to compile a book of the drawings she had made illustrating her awakening. Although many publishers were keen, none were willing to bear the exorbitant costs of printing drawings in colour. This inspired Gautam to start Yogi Impressions in late 1999 to publish Santosh Ma’s first book.
At the end of that year, he decided to holiday in Hong Kong where his elder sister Nikki lived and worked. There, upon the insistence of Nikki, Gautam met the spiritual master Eckhart Tolle, who happened to be visiting the city at the same time. This seemingly unexceptional, hour-long meeting with the Eckhart was, Gautam sees now, his introduction to Silence.
Eckhart had mentioned that publishing would be the start of ‘an adventure’ for him and very quickly, Gautam’s interest in advertising waned. Within months, Yogi Impressions published the Indian edition of The Power of Now and is today a 25-year-old, thriving, spirituality-centric publishing house, still led by Gautam.
The Guru appears
The defining moment came in February 2000, when Gautam met the realised master, Ramesh Balsekar, a direct disciple of the renowned Advaita sage Nisargadatta Maharaj. With no apparent interest in Advaita, Gautam tagged along with Nikki’s friends who had travelled to India to attend a satsang with Rameshji.
He found himself back at satsang the following Sunday. His future Guru was quick to notice and said, ‘Isn’t this the second consecutive Sunday you have come? Be careful, young man. This will become your Sunday Church!’
And Sunday Church it indeed was. Gautam had found a father-figure, friend and mentor in Rameshji, but above all, he had found the Guru he had been unconsciously seeking.
Rameshji wrote of his dear disciple, in the foreword to The Buddha’s Sword, ‘During the early years when Gautam visited me every Sunday morning, I noticed the keen interest he showed in the subject, and I soon came to the conclusion that “awakening” had taken place and that he was on his way to “deliverance”— awakening functioning in daily living.’
Gautam says he got answers to questions he never asked when he was with Rameshji and over the next decade, attained ‘deliverance’ at the feet of his beloved Guru.
A flower blooms
As a publisher of books on spirituality and as an ardent seeker of Truth, Gautam has met many spiritual masters, yogis, clairvoyants and Sufi mystics over the years. His teaching is an amalgam of the wisdom of different spiritual traditions, but always in service of Advaita.
He is also an author on the subject of non-duality and peace in daily living. His first essay, a tribute to his Guru on his ninetieth birthday, was published in a leading spiritual magazine of the country in 2007. This piece, with the gentle encouragement of Rameshji, led to Gautam’s first book Pointers from Ramesh Balsekar.
He has authored seven books since; each sparkling with delightfully clear and profound insights culled from his lived experience of the teaching. Readers often appreciate his trademark ability to cut through the noise and write simply, with warmth, making Advaita accessible to everyone. Some of his books have been translated into Russian, German, Spanish, Hindi and Marathi.
Fruits of True Love
Gautam is available, in person, at monthly satsangs and meditations (held at his home in Mumbai), online Zoom sessions and residential, immersive retreats held, across India, regularly through the year. Seekers are welcome to join the mailing list to receive updates on satsangs, Zoom meetings, retreats and speaking engagements.
An exhaustive collection of over five hundred recordings of Gautam’s satsangs and talks are available to spiritual aspirants on the Gautam Sachdeva YouTube channel. He is also a much-loved presence on the very popular Sai Baba’s Devotee Speaks.